Craig Robertson - Snapshot

Winter focused on his head and on the wound, the crater that had been driven through his skull by the sniper’s bullet. Death through a lens. The murky light offered by the September sun lent his photographs a muted hue, casting them drab and downbeat. He fastened on a daylight fill-in flash and lit it in its full glory. Colours flooded the aperture, filling his viewfinder with everything he wanted. He shot, shot and shot.

He couldn’t hear anyone talking. It was Central Station all over again, locked in his own little world of death. He heard blood, pounding in his ears and thumping at his heart. He saw blood, already drying on the man’s face and drenching his long sleeved white. It swam round him like a velvet pillow, soaking up his soul.

His clothes were designer-expensive, the kind of bad taste cool pumped out by Italian designers and worn by overpaid footballers. Mr Hole in his Head flaunted his money, wore it as a badge.

The guy’s face spoke to Winter of a life lived in the scumbag lane. The tanning studio glow and taut skin said nightclub poser. The scar shouted hard man in a hard town. Then there were the wide, cold fish eyes that had learned the light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming truck and had screamed for help. His eyes roared fear.

His shirt was opened, ripped open maybe, almost to the waist. This guy had had the shit kicked out of him, with ugly red welts forming on his chest where he had been punched or kicked. He focused in on the marks one by one, all the time a bell going off in the back of his head. Something he’d seen before but couldn’t think what. He also photographed his wrists which were telltale red and scored as if they had been bound tight.

A voice behind him burst his bubble.

‘Done with this one?’

No, he thought. No, I’m fucking well not done. I want to stand here for ever, toe to toe with the eternity that this guy has slipped into, stand here and see if he blinks first. I want to see his soul slip away and his flesh peel.

‘Winter, are you done?’

This time he recognized the voice as being Alex Shirley’s. The detective superintendent sounded testy and impatient. He had to drag his eyes away from the entry wound and remove the scowl from his face before he turned to look at him.

‘Two minutes, sir.’

‘Make it one. I need to find out who these arseholes are.’

He stood back to take a final full-length shot in situ, framing the victim amidst stern-faced polis. He raised his lens slightly and pushed it left, catching a cop looking down at the body with a mixture of curiosity and disgust. Something about the whirr of the motor made the officer turn his head and look at Winter suspiciously but he’d already turned the camera away and blanked his stare. Job done.

Just a few feet away yet a world apart going by his clothes and the Ford Focus was the older man who was sleeping unhappily in a bath of burgundy. Winter guessed he might be in his mid-fifties even though the only clue apart from his clothing was that the man’s hair was flecked in creeping grey. The area formerly occupied by his face was a gory hole of violent carmine, the soft flesh, bone and gristle having been blown away by the sniper’s bullet.

Winter saw sensible, casual brown shoes with soles that would stand up to wet autumn leaves or a rain-soaked garden. He saw dark brown corduroy trousers and a dark-green jumper that emphasised a middle-aged paunch. He saw a father and a grandfather, a hard-working family man, an ordinary man.

That night, someone was going to have to sit down with a wee girl and boy and explain why they wouldn’t see grandpa again. They’d have to try to make a seven-year-old understand how their papa could die when all he was doing was going for petrol.

Still, it was doubtful that they could be more shocked than the ordinary man was. Even without a face, there was no disguising his astonishment. He had fallen back flat with his arms wide, confused, questioning, pleading and utterly lost.

Winter got in close on the faceless face, picking out every detail where the bullet had done such horrendous damage. It was hard to see what had happened to this man as a thing of beauty, by all accounts the wrong man in the wrong place with the wrong people. And with no eyes to reflect his crossing, neither he nor Winter could see where he was going or where he’d been.

Winter stepped back and got both men in the one shot, something that even the sniper had failed to do. Two men whose paths should never have crossed and if there was such thing as a heaven or a hell then surely they’d be going in separate directions.

As he stepped away from the older man’s stricken body and headed towards the third, a slim figure moved past him in the opposite direction. Even in a white scene suit, overshoes, a hood and a mask, Cat Fitzpatrick looked great. He couldn’t see her hair but there was no disguising her green eyes or the curve of her rear. He briefly watched her begin to reach inside the victim’s jacket as requested by Shirley but he had to stop staring, he had another body to look at.

The third victim was twenty paces away, face down in a rufous puddle and clinging onto the concrete for dear death. His white trainers were blood-sticky, as were his faded denims, brown leather jacket and reddish hair. The little brains he once had were sitting in an untidy pile next to him. The guy’s face was squashed to the ground where he lay, making his nose snubbed like a boxer. His eyes were slumped and his jaw slack, giving in to the inevitable and paying no more than passing interest to the dirt beneath him. He wasn’t much more than twenty years old and looked ready to cry for his mammy but for the fact that it was all too late.

He knew what was coming, he must have. He might have heard the shot that killed his mate, heard the scream or the cry and the body hitting the deck. He’d have run faster but there are some things you just can’t outrun. Then bang, his lights would have gone out in an instant and he crossed the line into nothingness. Or somethingness, who knew.

Winter focused on his dull green eyes and tried to capture what he’d last seen. He had the look of someone who had decided none of it had been worth it. He’d made a bad decision the day he’d started getting into cars with the man in the white shirt with the scar on his cheek. His mammy had probably told him that and now he knew she was right. Mammies are always right. Too late to learn that lesson now.

Above him, three cops were chatting, paying little attention to the dead kid at their feet. Seen one body, seen them all. One of the three had obviously cracked a joke and they were barely suppressing grins and one was sniggering. Winter caught a beautiful wide shot with his Canon, the three of them looking one to the other, everywhere except at the body that threatened to dirty their boots. Above them, glowering Scottish clouds, fit to burst, were deciding just when to unleash their load and wash away the blood of the sinner. Drama above and below and couldn’t-give-a-fuck in between. The picture was a winner.

‘Hey. You miss your shot there?’

The accusing voice was from the tallest of the three cops, glaring at Winter, obviously realizing he was in the frame and not best pleased about it. You should show a bit more respect for the dead and you wouldn’t be caught out, Winter thought.

‘Just getting a scale,’ he told him. ‘Need to put everything into perspective.’

‘Aye? Well, get your fucking scale somewhere else or I’ll shove it up your arse. You’re here to photograph the stiff, stick to that.’

‘Don’t wet yourself. I’m just doing my job and don’t need you to tell me how to do it.’

‘I know what you need, ya cunt, and if there weren’t brass about then you’d be getting it.’